“Labiaplasty surgery increase blamed on pornography”
Medical experts have sounded the alarm over soaring rates of labiaplasty, as the preliminary findings of a study show women are increasingly turning to private providers to pursue “designer vaginas”.
NHS and private sector professionals have warned that some young women approaching cosmetic surgery companies are depressed or on medication, and are being sold operations without preliminary access to alternative psychological therapies.
Experts carrying out the research at King’s College London also suggest that the so-called “pornification” of modern culture may be driving up surgery rates to unprecedented levels as both men and women have increased exposure to pornographic imagery via the internet. Recent studies have shown sharp rises in the numbers of young people accessing porn.
The King’s study is attempting to find out more about the motivations of women who are increasingly seeking surgery. Professor Linda Cardozo, a gynaecologist, said that the preliminary findings show that while women go to the NHS seeking help with functional problems, such as discomfort during sex, those turning to private companies were often seeking purely cosmetic changes and were placing themselves at risk in a growing industry that is largely unregulated. Experts say the risks of labiaplasty include permanent scarring, infections, bleeding and irritation, as well as increased or decreased sensitivity if nerves get caught in the operation.
“The private sector is not recorded, audited or regulated,” said Cardozo. “We have no way of knowing how many surgeries take place there. It’s possible to go on a [surgery] course for $75,000 in the US, come back with your own laser equipment and set up. At least if you have it on the NHS you have to go through your GP and that’s a gatekeeper.”
Cardozo also expressed concerns that private providers could be acting irresponsibly by operating on vulnerable women in need of psychological care.
Cosmetic surgeon Angelica Kavouni is carrying out three labiaplasties a week, both for the NHS and for her private company, Cosmetic Solutions, where she charges £3,000 per operation. She said: “A lot who come to me for labiaplasty are depressed and some are on medication. That’s a major issue, because you shouldn’t have cosmetic surgery when you are like that. It definitely needs to be investigated.”
The number of labiaplasty operations in Britain is booming. The surgery is primarily intended to make labia smaller or more symmetrical. Figures released to the Observer show that the Harley Medical Group, a leading cosmetic surgery provider across the UK, received more than 5,000 enquiries for cosmetic gynaecology in 2010, 65% of which were for labial reduction, the rest for tightening and reshaping.
Similar increases have also been experienced by the NHS. A study published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 2009 revealed that there had been an almost 70% increase in the number of women having labiaplasty on the NHS on the previous year. There were 1,118 operations in 2008, compared with 669 in 2007 and 404 in 2006.
A partner in the King’s University research, Dr David Veale, a consultant psychiatrist in cognitive behaviour therapy, said he believed the surge in demand could be linked to easier access to explicit sexual imagery. “We haven’t completed the research, but there is suspicion that this is related to much greater access to porn, so it is easier for women to compare themselves to actresses who may have had it done. This is to do with the increasing sexualisation of society – it’s the last part of the body to be changed.”
Dr Veale also expressed concerns that some women seeking surgery, the majority of whom seem to be under 30, were receiving labiaplasty on the mistaken impression that it might solve psychological problems such as body dysmorphic disorder, a condition that causes sufferers to obsess with a part of their body.
“Most people go straight to cosmetic surgery and say they’ve got a problem with ‘down there’ and never recognise that it might be a psychological problem… This study is about finding alternatives.”
One 22-year-old, who did not wish to be named, underwent surgery in October. Although she suffered irritation from the size of her labia before the operation – sometimes when walking and often during sex – she admits her decision to have surgery was mostly psychological.
After having surgery on the NHS, she said it took more than two months for the pain to go away: “It was horrible. They didn’t explain how much it was going to hurt. I couldn’t walk for three days and I caught two infections. A lot of women who go for surgery don’t know what kind of pain they are putting themselves through. I never want to go through it again, but I’m glad I did it. It really helped my confidence.”
If you’re seeking surgery or have undergone labiaplasty and would like to contribute to the King’s research, visit www.veale.co.uk.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/feb/27/labiaplasty-surgery-labia-vagina-pornography
“In which we betray our gender”
And in which a man really gets it which is nice:
But people can be weird, man. People — straight, male people, in particular — sure can have some strange misconceptions about how the world spins. Also, they are usually loud. Anyway, this cartoon will be of no help at all in changing our stupid, sexist culture of rape, murder, domination and bad tv — in fact, it hardly even qualifies as entertainment (although there is one kitten, scroll down to the bottom to skip straight to it!). But drawing this certainly made me feel better, so it made the cut. Don’t think I don’t know how I make you suffer, dear, patient reader!
(click on the image below twice to get it full size)
The comments on the original page are probably best avoided, unless you enjoy that kind of thing, and there are enough intelligent men and women there to make it amusing (also, an MRA going by the pseudonym ‘Gloria Steinem’!?!). This, particularly, from Mitchell Craig (about half way down the page), is one to remember and use:
One day, medical science will come up with a way to safely remove your head from your asshole. Until then, I will remember you in my prayers.
Found via Feminist Law Professors
Endangered Species
http://www.endangeredspecieswomen.org.uk/
Susie Orbach says:
‘Endangered Species summit is an urgent call to action: to save future generations from the body misery which can start as early as 6 and continue until women are in old age homes. The summit aims to show girls and women how they can do something about it, and to inspire them to embrace change.’
‘Over the past 30 years the workings of the diet, pharmaceutical, food, cosmetic surgery and style industries have made us view the body we live in as a body which must be perfect. The goal of perfectibility has turned generations of women against their own bodies. The young woman who can feel free to explore her interests without being preoccupied by how her body appears or focus on what procedure she should have in the future to change it is becoming an ‘endangered species’.
Quote of the Day
It was hardly ever going to be a fair match: some activist women against an entire military-industrial-cosmetic complex geared up towards getting us to commodify our own bodies. […] It is the gaze of search and destroy, and it certainly affects the inner lives of those who are not perfect. Which is a fair few of us.
“MEPs putting child pornographers’ rights ahead of abuse victims, claim campaigners”
European MPs have been accused of putting the rights of child pornographers ahead of abused children after it emerged that they are to water down new laws, backed by the UK government, for curbing the dissemination of child abuse images.
The European parliament’s civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee (LIBE) will meet in Strasbourg tomorrow, when it is expected to approve a controversial measure that would compel EU member states to inform publishers of child pornography that their images are to be deleted from the internet or blocked. Child pornographers will also have to be informed of their right to appeal against any removal or blocking. The measure would make the UK’s system for blocking and removing child pornography without informing the publisher illegal.
“MEPs seem more concerned with the rights of child pornographers than they do with the rights of children who have been sexually abused to make their foul, illegal images,” said John Carr, an adviser to the UK government on child internet safety and the secretary of the Children’s Charities Coalition on Internet Safety.
For the directive to become an EU-wide law it must be agreed both by the Council of Ministers and the European parliament.
The Council of Ministers agreed tough new measures approving the blocking and deletion of child pornography images shortly before Christmas. But LIBE intends to reject them after civil rights campaigners mounted a lobbying campaign, warning that they were a form of internet censorship.
QotD: The Naked Truth
From Bidisha’s article, Pubic hair removal: The naked truth
If porn told you to jump off a cliff, would you do that too? Porn has introduced a new aesthetic – perhaps as a joke or momentary experiment – and women have responded with unquestioning servility and breezy abandon. At least now we can confront the naked truth about women’s submissiveness in all its stark, raw, bald reality.
Men in porn are often also fully waxed. You can see the spring branches of their willies and their little bobbling balls, outlined in their scrota like farm eggs in a chammy cloth. But men in the non-porn world are not dedicating themselves to full deforestation, writing about it in major publications as though it’s a serious consideration, or putting pressure on other men to do it. Men are not as cowed, self-hating, obedient or biddable as women in this regard. They are not going to make the effort to do anything to please a woman, at the cost of their own comfort. […] They are busy pursuing their own happiness, leaving women to fight through the thicket of their own Stockholm syndrome, perpetually pruning their pubic hair in a desperate bid to gain approval.
QotD: “what porn is about”
From the skeptifem blog (found via the comment threads at I Blame the Patriarchy):
When I discuss pornography with its viewers and fans, there is a really obvious fundamental disconnect between us. The often cited definition of porn, in their view, is “pictures of people having sex, which they enjoy, that are enjoyable to look at”. I’ll call that the sexy-fun model of pornography for short. I don’t know how anyone could define pornography like that, especially considering stories like Nadya Suleman. She is the woman who gave birth to eight babies at once and had a lot of plastic surgery to try and resemble Angelina Jolie. Many people were outraged at her reproductive choice. She is in bad financial shape and some skeevy porn industry dude keeps trying to get her into porn. What is the demand behind this pornography? Why does this experienced porn producer think the porn will sell?
The answer is pretty damn obvious: people hate her, and feel that porn humiliation is a punishment that they would pay to see. It has nothing to do with being attracted to her or wanting nice pictures of sex- between calling her crazy and irresponsible there is a steady flow of insults calling her ugly on most news or blogs about Suleman. She is poor and a man is offering her lots of money to do pornography, offering more each time she turns him down instead of respecting her saying no. Now he is trying to buy her mortgage and shoot porn in her house, as a new way to try and coerce her into doing pornography. Instead of being more proof that pornography isn’t about the prostitutes having fun, it is a casual conversation in the national media. It is about her having to make a choice between having a place to live and having sex she really doesn’t want to have (if she did, I doubt that money would be needed at all, much less higher and higher monetary offers). Lets say a substantial number of people find her attractive and would like to have sexy fun with Suleman, despite the widespread ridicule of her appearance-the desperation for money would kinda get in the way of thinking that she is having any fun at all. She would be paid to fake it, and it should (in theory) bother the sexy-fun model believers a lot.
QotD: Simulacra
From the Wikipedia article on Jean Baudrillard’s theory of Simulacra and Simulation
The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations and symbolism of culture and media that construct perceived reality, the acquired understanding by which our lives and shared existence is rendered legible; Baudrillard believed that society has become so saturated with these simulacra and our lives so saturated with the constructs of society that all meaning was being rendered meaningless by being infinitely mutable. Baudrillard called this phenomenon the “precession of simulacra”.
“Simulacra and Simulation” breaks the sign-order into 4 stages:
1. The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct that, a sign is a “reflection of a profound reality” (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called “the sacramental order”.
2. The second stage is perversion of reality, this is where we believe the sign to be an unfaithful copy, which “masks and denatures” reality as an “evil appearance – it is of the order of maleficence”. Here, signs and images do not faithfully show us reality, but can hint at the existence of something real which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.
3. The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the simulacrum pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no relationship to. Baudrillard calls this the “order of sorcery”.
4. The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims.
Porn, not actually very good for you
Article from New York Magazine here
Is it possible that porn is causing men to detach from their partners in more profound ways? […], scientists speculate that a dopamine-oxytocin combo is released in the brain during orgasm, acting as a “biochemical love potion,” as behavioral therapist Andrea Kuszewski calls it. It’s the reason after having sex with someone, you’re probably more inclined to form an emotional attachment. But you don’t have to actually have sex in order to get those neurotransmitters firing. When you watch porn, “you’re bonding with it,” Kuszewski says. “And those chemicals make you want to keep coming back to have that feeling.” Which allows men not only to get off on porn but to potentially develop a neurological attachment to it. They can, in essence, date porn.
As a result of the blending of reality and fantasy, some women have chosen to willingly play along by a new set of rules in order to keep their men interested: They’re intentionally impersonating porn stars. Sadie, the real-estate agent, says, “A lot of guys have come to expect P.S.E. [the “Porn-Star Experience”] as a common thing—snatches waxed bald, access to every hole—and plenty of women are more than happy to provide. A few might enjoy it, but for most it’s harrowing. I think there’s a fear that if they can’t make it happen, their boyfriend will retreat online.”
And so a conundrum emerges. Men, oversaturated by porn, secretly hunger for the variety that porn offers. Women, noticing a decline in their partners’ libidos, try to reenact the kinds of scenes that men watch on their computer screens. Men, as a result, get really freaked out. They don’t want their real women and their fantasy women to inhabit the same body.
Found via Reclusive Leftist ‘Looks like my generation may be the last to actually enjoy sex’
I feel so sorry for young women today, and I am so glad I’m not one of them. Christ, what a deal! “You can have all the sex you want, but: a) you’ll have to undergo painful waxing/implanting/plastiodeformation to be appealing to men; b) even so your boyfriend will still wish you were the girl in the porn video he imprinted on, and the whole time you’re doing it he’s going to be pretending you’re her; c) during sex you won’t get to actually have any kind of intimate emotional connection with your boyfriend, or indeed any kind of genuine passion at all, because you’ll be too busy acting out whatever is in the porn video; d) also you’ll have to perform whatever sexual practices are in porn even if they’re extremely painful and unpleasant and make you miserable BECAUSE PORN ROOLZ.”
Anti-Porn Feminists 
Sex trafficking still not a myth, ‘off-street’ sex still not ‘safe’, johns don’t give a shit
Reports in this Sunday’s Observer after the sentensing of Bogdan and Marius Nejloveanu for sex trafficking offenses.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/feb/06/sex-slave-trafficking-brothel-crackdown:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/feb/06/sex-traffick-romania-britain:
The point is, this is how brothels, which are, according to sex industry supporters/apologists, supposed to be ‘safe’, operate – they demand 12 hour shifts, they don’t ask any questions, they actively help traffickers and pimps control the women and girls they are abusing.
A legalised brothel may only be able to demand an eight hour shift, as if having unwanted sex with eight men a day as opposed to 12 would make it all ok. They might refuse to do business with any dodgy pimps, but then find there’s no longer a supply of ‘girls’ available.
There’s also the ever-laughable claim that the johns will help police the system. 70 men a week for six months equals 1680 men (of course there will be some ‘repeat customers’, but women are moved around specifically because men want ‘fresh faces’); so that’s easily over 1000 men who didn’t give a shit, who must have been able on some level to see that they were having coercive sex with an emaciated, battered teenager with little or no English, and just did not care. The handful (and it really is less than five) cases of ‘savior’ johns a year always gets played up by sex industry advocates, but the idea that these men can help protect vulnerable women is a joke.
There is a stats piece at the end of the article that I’m going to quote in full, to avoid accusations of selective quoting on my part.
The police say that approx. half the migrants working in off-street prostitution in the UK are from Eastern Europe, of those half are classified as trafficked or ‘vulnerable’, with ‘only’ 400 meeting the police’s legal definition of trafficking.
Of course, sex industry apologists are going to jump on this, it’s only 400 women after all! And half the women from Eastern Europe are willing! There’s no definition given for what ‘willing’ actually means, the definition given for ‘vulnerable’ is “that they spoke little English, were overly reliant on their “controllers” and faced other barriers preventing them from exiting prostitution.” So, then, are the ‘willing’ women those who have been there long enough to pick up some English and become institutionalised so that they don’t need to be so tightly controlled by their pimps? As the Poppy Project points out, the police methodology involves “officers entering brothels and asking women if they had been trafficked”.
The sex industry is, by its very nature, exploitative, it couldn’t exist in any form without extreme economic inequality, and it couldn’t exist in its current form, the form that hundreds of thousands of men choose to engage with, with out extreme violent coercion.
While we’re on the subject, this report on the break up of a trafficking ring involving girls from Nigeria (and yes, the report also mentions other ‘willing’ women being pimped out), again really emphasises how little the johns give a shit – observe the size of the operation, compare the description of the trafficked Nigerian girls with the adverts that were places offering ‘escorts’ (the johns were paying ‘escort’ level prices too).
You have to wonder how so many men can be so blind, how they can manage not to tell the difference between a terrified child with cuts all over her body and a ‘fun flexible kinky nudist’.
It’s too easy to say that men are fundamentally incapable of seeing, I refuse to accept that half the human race are actually incapable of being human (the fact that some men can see, and that some women can’t shows that this is not true). Patriarchy brutalises men so that they are incapable of empathising.
Pornography plays a role in this; we know pornography is used to ‘train’ women into prostitution, and that men increasingly see pornography as sex, so if both the john and the woman he’s assaulting are following the ‘porn script’ the john won’t be able to see that anything’s wrong.